The good news was that they all seemed to have penthouse apartments. That
was to be expected, Chavez thought. Rich dudes like these bastards would
have the whole top floor of whatever building they picked. It made people
like that feel big, he supposed, to be able to look down on everyone else, like
people in the L.A. high-rises had looked down on the barrios of his youth.
None of them had ever been soldiers, though. You never wanted to skyline
yourself that way. Better to be down in the weeds with the mice and the
peons. Well, everybody had their limitations, Ding told himself.
It was just a matter, then, of finding a tall spot. That proved easy. Again
the pacific nature of the city worked in their favor. They merely picked the
proper building, walked in, took the elevator to the top floor, and from there
walked to the roof. Chavez set up his camera on a tripod, selected his longest
lens, and started shooting. Even doing it all in daylight was no hardship, the
instructions had told them, and the weather gods cooperated, giving them a
gray, overcast afternoon. He shot ten frames of each building, rewinding and
ejecting the film cassettes, which went back into their boxes for labeling.
The entire operation took half an hour.
“You get used to trusting the guy?” Chavez asked after they made the
pass.
“Ding, I just got used to trusting you,” Clark replied quietly, easing the
tension of the moment.
31!
Ike River Rubicon
“So?”
Ryan took his time considering the answer. Adler deserved to know some-
thing. There was supposed to be honor in negotiations. You never really told
the whole truth, but you weren’t supposed to lie either.
“So continue as before,” the National Security Advisor said.
“We’re doing something.” It was not a question.
“We’re not sitting on our hands, Scott. They’re not going to cave in are
they?”
Adler shook his head. “Probably not.”
“Encourage them to rethink their position,” Jack suggested. It wasn’t
very helpful, but it was something to say.
“Cook thinks there are political forces working over there to moderate
matters. His counterpart on the other side is giving him encouraging infor-
mation.”
“Scott, we have a couple of CIA officers working over there, covered as
Russian journalists. They’ve been in contact with Koga. He’s not very happy
with developments. We’ve told him to act normally. There’s no sense in
harming the guy, but if … best move, have Cook feel the guy out on what
the opposition elements in their government really are, and what power they
might have. He must not reveal who we’re in contact with.”
“Okay, I’ll pass that one along. Otherwise keep the same line?” Adler
asked.
“Don’t give them anything of substance. Can you dance some?”
“I think so.” Adler checked his watch. “It’s at our place today. I have to
sit down with Brett before it starts.”
“Keep me posted.”
“Will do,” Adler promised.
It was still before dawn at Groom Lake. A pair of C-5B transports taxied to
the end of the runway and lifted off. The load was light, only three helicop-
ters each and other equipment, not much for aircraft designed to carry two
tanks. But it would be a long flight for one of them, over five thousand miles,
and adverse winds would require two midair refuelings, in turn necessitating
a full relief crew for each transport. The additional flight crewmen relegated
the passengers to the space aft of the wing box, where the seats were less
comfortable.
Richter removed the dividers from the three-seat set and put his earplugs
in. As soon as the aircraft lifted off, his hand moved automatically for the
pocket of his flight suit where he kept his cigarettes-or had until he’d quit a
few months earlier. Damn. How could you go into combat without a smoke?
he asked himself, then leaned against a pillow and faded off to sleep. He
didn’t even feel the buffet of the aircraft as it climbed into the jetstream over
the Nevada mountains.
Forward, the flight crew turned north. The sky was dark and would re-
main so for almost all of the flight. Their most important task would be to
stay alert and awake. Automated equipment would handle the navigation,
and the hour was such that the red-eye commercial flights were already out
of the way and the regular day’s business hops had hardly begun. The sky
was theirs, such as it was, with broken clouds and bitterly cold air outside the
aluminum skin of the aircraft, on their way to the goddamnedest destination
the reserve crew had ever considered. The second Galaxy’s crew was luck-
ier. It turned southwest, and in less than an hour was over the Pacific Ocean
for their shorter flight to Hickam Air Force Base.
USS Tennessee entered Pearl Harbor an hour early and proceeded under her
own power to an outlying berth, dispensing with the harbor pilot and de-
pending on a single Navy tugboat to bring her alongside. There were no
lights, and the evolution was accomplished by the glow of the other lit-up
piers of the harbor. The one surprising thing was the presence of a large fuel
truck on the quay. The official car and the admiral standing next to it were to
be expected, Commander Claggett thought. The gangway was rigged
quickly, and ComSubPac hustled across even before the ensign was rigged
on the after part of the sail. He saluted that way anyway.
“Welcome aboard, Admiral,” the CO called from his control station,
then headed down the ladder to meet Admiral Mancuso in his own cabin.
“Dutch, I’m glad you managed to get her under way,” Mancuso said with
a smile tempered by the situation.
“(ilml I finally got to dance with the girl,” Claggelt allowed. “I have all
I he diesel I need, sir.” he added.
“We have to pump oul one of your tanks.” Large as she was. Tennessee
had more than one fuel hunker Cor her auxiliary diesel.
“What for, sir?”
“Some JP-5.” Mancuso opened his briefcase and pulled out the mission
orders. The ink was hardly dry on them. “You’re going to start off in the
special-ops business.” The automatic tendency was for Claggett to ask Why
me? but he restrained himself. Instead he flipped over the cover page of the
orders and started checking his programmed position.
“I might get a little business there, sir,” the Captain observed.
“The idea is to stay covert, but the usual rule applies.” The usual rule
meant that Claggett would always be free to exercise his command judg-
ment.
“Now hear this,” the i-MC announcing system told everyone. “The
smoking lamp is out throughout the ship. The smoking lamp is out through-
out the ship.”
“You let people smoke aboard?” ComSu’bPac asked. Quite a few of his
skippers did not.
“Command judgment, remember?”
Thirty feet away, Ron Jones was in the sonar room, pulling a computer
disk out of his pocket.
“We’ve had the upgrade,” the chief told him.
“This one’s brand-new.” The contractor slipped it into the slot on the
backup computer. “I got a hit on you first night out when you ran over the
Oregon SOSUS array. Something loose aft?”
“Toolbox. It’s gone now. We ran over two more later,” the chief pointed
out.
“How fast?” Jones asked.
“The second one was just under flank, and we curlicued overtop the
thing.”
“I got a twitch, nothing more, and that one had the same software I just
uploaded for you. You got a quiet boat here, Chief. Walk down?”
“Yeah, the Cap’n tore a few strips off, but there ain’t no loose gear aboard
now.” He paused. “Less’n you count the ends on the toilet-paper rolls.”
Jones settled into one of the chairs, and looked around the crowded work-
ing space. This was his place. He’d only had a hint of the ship’s mission
orders-Mancuso had asked his opinion of water conditions and worried if
the Japanese might have taken the U.S. Navy’s SOSUS station on Honshu
intact, and that had been enough, really. She was sure as hell going in harm’s
way, perhaps the first PacFlt sub to do so. God, and a boomer, too, he
thought. Big and slow. One hand reached out and touched the workstation.
“I know who you are, Dr. Jones,” the chief said, reading the man’s
thoughts. “I know my job, too, okay?”
“The other guy’s bouts, when they snort-”
“The thousund-hert/ line. We have the dash-five tail and all the upgrades.
Including yours, I guess.” The chief reached for his coffee, and on reflec-
tion, poured a mug for his visitor.
“Thank you.”
“Asheville and Charlotte?”
Jones nodded, looking down at his coffee. “You know Frenchy Laval?”
“He was one of the instructors in my A-School, long time back.”
“Frenchy was my chief on Dallas, working for Admiral Mancuso. His
son was aboard Asheville. I knew him. It’s personal.”